


“Be Your Own Villain”

by thatsrightdollface



Series: Seven Worlds (Crossovers for the Umbrella Academy Team) [2]
Category: Harley Quinn (Cartoon 2019), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Batman Fusion, Ambiguity, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Klaus's powers are intended to reference his comic-incarnation here, Luther works for Two-Face, Memory Loss, Swearing, at times anyway, everybody's in Gotham!!!, spoilers for the second seasons of both TUA and Harley Quinn!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26376193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Luther’s forgotten a lot of stuff he should really know, since waking up in Gotham.Harley Quinn crossover.  This takes place during the events of Harley Quinn Season 2 Episode 1, “New Gotham.”
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Harley Quinn & Chaos, Klaus Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Luther Hargreeves & Two-Face
Series: Seven Worlds (Crossovers for the Umbrella Academy Team) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907311
Comments: 14
Kudos: 18





	“Be Your Own Villain”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!! Thanks for reading. :D I'm sorry for anything and everything I might've gotten wrong, here. 
> 
> I hope you've been staying safe/doing as well as possible!

Plenty of Two-Face’s goons and henchpeople hung around Noonan’s bar after a day out on the streets of Gotham City, and by now, you know what, Luther Hargreeves did too. Even three weeks after Gotham found itself officially kicked out of the United States of America — alleys full of mangled squirming things, fire through splintered windows, sinks overflowing with sludge and tiny mouse bones, all that. The Joker had taken over pretty much everything; the Joker had fallen. It was apocalyptic wasteland times in Gotham, but hey. Luther folded his huge arms on the wobbly, suspiciously-sticky table in front of him and took shots that would’ve had him sputtering, back at the start of this, when he’d been someone else. 

Luther played poker with goons working for Penguin or the Riddler, with their tuxedo t-shirts and green question mark-y logos. He laughed with other henches dressed just like him, suits slit down the middle, black and white as print on a page. Luther didn’t handle the Chicago typewriter too much, not like these guys — he was strong enough, fire-resistant enough, that the boss usually sent him in with his fists or kept him as a personal bodyguard. He had a machine gun strapped under his coat, mind you. Sure. Of course. But usually when Two-Face flicked his fingers to send him forward, Luther knew he wanted him to look a certain kind of tough. “Anything Bane can do, we can do better” style, Two-Face had called it. Something hollow in Luther ached to please. He shook out his wrists. He took the chemically-enhanced punches. He came here to drink, head aching.

When Luther first started working for Two-Face, he had known how he got to Gotham. He’d been homeless, feeling impossibly far away from anyone who knew him and guilty for something he couldn’t remember, now; he’d been so completely hungry that his insides felt like one huge wound, and he’d been eyed nervously by the fast-walking Gothamites in their pearls, cellphones tight to their ears, Joker gas antidote pens in their briefcases. He knew all of that, even now. But the more time passed breathing the toxic, shifting-neon air of Gotham City... the more he hung out around here... the less Luther remembered of whatever the hell came before. 

Two-Face’d had mercy on him. Took him in, cigarette smoke and jazz all around. Two-Face said Luther was a little like a son to him, the super-powered, convenient son with gorilla arms he’d never had. Luther knew he _used_ to have someone else he called “Dad,” and he imagined he should probably figure out why exactly he had gorilla arms, but... damn it. This was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement: that’s what he’d told himself before. He would wear the black and white carved-in-half fedora, and he’d pay Two-Face back for getting him off the streets, but then he had to fix... something. The details were gone, like the Bat Signal most nights, nowadays. Like the Batman, that liquid-shadow Dark Knight who’d kept the peace here, once upon a time. The screeching-bat bogeyman just outside the window.

Luther knew the boss had plans for Gotham. He and some other big-name villains were putting together a new Legion of Doom kinda thing: the Injustice League. Luther knew Gotham water tasted sticky, and it was nice being part of a crew where he remembered a lot of Two-Face’s other goons’ names, and beer at Noonan’s was reasonably priced. Probably he should’ve thought what he had — what he was — could be enough... but there was one thing Luther sort of partway remembered from before Gotham that got him stumbling. A reason he never let anyone kiss him, let’s say, even though once or twice by now people had asked. 

It was this one woman’s face, her voice, her conspiratorial, bemused smiles. Luther couldn’t remember her name, but he thought he’d probably screamed it a lot, once, stumbling up and down Gotham’s streets, strangers hurrying away from him. Maybe she’d been his boss, before Two-Face? Or maybe his girlfriend? He dreamt about her, still, and sometimes he woke up with humiliating silent tears on his cheeks. There had used to be other too-familiar people in Luther’s dreams, usually showing up with this woman, but their faces had mostly smeared away. Luther’d tried and tried to hold on to them. This woman’s, though... hers was still clear. 

For now. 

Who knew how long that would last, really? 

“Luther, you in this round?” one of the other Two-Face goons asked, shuffling a deck of cards. Back at Noonan’s, back at those rickety tables. And before Luther answered, in she came: Harley Quinn, the cartwheeling ne’er do well who took down the Joker, her own former beloved Mistah J. She was swinging a bat around, yelling something about how this was _New_ New Gotham and all the forces of power that had stood before were shit. So somebody worked as a goon for Bane today, but, like, why? What had the supervillains of Gotham ever done for them, personally? Harley flipped up onto the counter and said that when the Joker treated her horribly, she claimed her own selfhood away from him. “Be your own villain,” she said, and as she talked the circus music wound around her, whimsical and dancing and hungry. The rest of the bar bubbled over, drinking it up, the tipsy music swaying on in their heads, too. 

Chairs got broken, and beer steins got smashed, and Luther looked down into his drink. Didn’t stand up. He had no reason to be _his own villain_ , and as for what Harley Quinn was suggesting, well, Luther knew exactly why he worked for Two-Face, didn’t he? Loyalty, and gratitude, and stubborn hope. Harley Quinn’d had every reason to leave the Joker, but _Luther_ was fine where he was. Whatever Two-Face asked from him; however many times he broke his nose. It was like an old song, always stuck in the back of Luther’s head. Harley’s irreverently playful circus music just couldn’t get in, yet. The clown ran from the bar, laughing like she was so often laughing, pigtails bouncing behind her. Most of the goons in Noonan’s went charging after, including that guy who’d been trying to see if Luther wanted to play cards. Luther took a long draw from his drink, and closed his eyes. 

When Luther opened his eyes, again, and glanced out the broken door to Noonan’s, he saw Harley Quinn meeting back up with some members of her crew in the street. There was King Shark wearing a blood-splattered hoodie, and there was Clayface, a shapeshifter who had tried to organize a Villainous Improv Night... and there was someone else, someone who looked the way an itch in the back of your throat felt he was _so damn familiar_ , somehow. This wasn’t the woman Luther remembered. Just wasn’t, obviously wasn’t. This person was barefoot out in the wreckage of New New Gotham, hovering an inch or so over the world. He had artfully ruffled dark hair and smeary eyeliner; he waved to Harley with both hands, and the words “Hello” and “Goodbye” were tattooed on his palms. 

This stranger from Harley Quinn’s crew had a lackadaisical, crooked smile, and looking at him made something sink in Luther’s chest. He felt too tangible all of a sudden, like he was swaying just on the edge of devastating realness. He watched as Harley slung her arms around this guy and King Shark’s shoulders and led them off. She was yelling something about More Ingredients for Sushi. She pulled an air horn out of nowhere in celebration, par for the course. Away they went, into the frenzied, hysterical wasteland. 

Luther went back to Two-Face the next morning just like he always did, uniform-grade fedora tipped jauntily, big hands resting easy in custom-sewn pockets. And the morning after that. He kept at his job for days, actually, even as so many of the henchpeople around him up and quit. But at night, he caught himself hunched over his too-small, too-breakable laptop, reading old news reports about Harley Quinn and her crew. Watching footage of them in action. That guy — the one who’d looked stupidly familiar? — was brand new, signed on just a little while before Gotham fell. He sometimes wore a feathery boa and sunglasses on heists. His code name, the one everybody knew, was the Séance. He could commune with the dead, and when Harley’d asked if he wanted to be in her crew he’d said, “Eh. Why not? Could be interesting, for a while.”

Maybe Luther felt so desperate about this because the woman he remembered from before Gotham could finally blur away at any time. Maybe he felt a kind of frustration and fondness, looking at the Séance his own self. A kind of defensiveness mixed with history. Luther wanted to know him, too, wanted to protect him. And that was kind of weird, wasn’t it? Why _was_ that? 

Luther studied the Séance, and listened to his laugh, and watched him rob a store without hurting anybody, only patting the cashier on the head and asking if she had any interest in meeting her dead great-great-great grandma. He tried over and over again to imagine the Séance interacting with the woman he still almost, almost remembered... what would they have talked about? Who were they? 

At about four thirty-six AM on the fifth day, Luther remembered the Séance’s other name: Klaus. Klaus Hargreeves, his brother, and — 

And —

Shit. 

And then pieces of the story came back like vomit, like a person puking down their shirt just outside Noonan’s, hands splayed on the gritty pavement. The Umbrella Academy, the shattered moon, the end of the world. Everything Luther had helped break — needed to fix, if anything at all was even fixable, by now. 

One of Luther’s other brothers had tried teleporting them away before they were all dead, _before the world was dead_ , and then... and then Gotham had reached out sick slimy giggling murder-carnival hands and dragged them in, hadn’t it? This wasn’t their planet, Luther knew, somehow, fundamentally. It ate up their memories, remade them in its image. Some people said Gotham was built directly over hell – if Luther had been a superstitious man, it might’ve made a lot of sense, knowing that. But even beyond hell, beyond Gotham City itself, this just wasn’t the sky he’d seen as a kid. He didn’t know any of the constellations, here. But... wait. Why _should_ he have known them? 

The name “Spaceboy” drifted to the surface of Luther’s mind, like an answer bobbing up to the little window of a Magic Eight Ball. That had been his name, before. Spaceboy. He’d lived on the moon. He’d been the youngest kid to get hurtled up to meet the cosmos. 

This was ridiculous, obviously. This was impossible. Delusional. Luther should just shower and get ready to report to work for Two-Face. Luther should –

And then there was another name, because of course there was another name: 

The woman Luther had remembered, even just a little bit, even after practically everything else left him. She was “Allison.” He’d screamed “Allison,” when he arrived here, and Gotham hadn’t answered him. Allison had sat with him, when he almost couldn’t breathe after a mission for “Dad” went wrong when they were younger. She had rubbed his back and told him she wasn’t giving up on him, no one was giving up on him. They’d read adventure books by the window. She had twined their arms together and tipped her head over to rest against his shoulder. Allison was — well. 

Luther could barely bring himself to look what Allison was to him in the face, now that he understood he might never see her again, but he could _feel_ it, like tears on his cheeks after a dream he wasn’t sure how to explain. Thinking about it turned his heartbeat into a battle drum. 

Maybe it said something that Luther knew he couldn’t ask Two-Face for help, here; the boss was a busy guy, with big things in the works, and he could easily just flip a coin to explain away why it was no good and Luther should get the hell back to work. 

Attaboy. 

No.

Luther felt bad about not clocking in, though, of course. He wrote a note — an apology, a half-explanation, a promise that he’d be back soon if he could — and he left it where Two-Face would find it just as the sun was coming up. But Allison could’ve been alone, here in New New Gotham, this damned jack-in-the-box of a world. The rest of the Umbrella Academy could’ve been alone, too, could’ve needed Luther to have their backs even if the full details of _who exactly they were_ (the guilt the apocalypse the unraveling) were still coming back to him. Oh God, oh damn. It had been _a year_ , now, with Luther working for Two-Face. So many unspeakable things could happen in a year, around a city like this.

Finding Allison was way too important to entrust to a coin flip, or to get pushed back to the end of Two-Face’s to-do list, after “Find a Suitably Tiny and Useless Chair to Make Fun of Bane With.” Luther kept telling himself all the possible ways she could be okay. 

Allison could’ve been a singer in Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge, possibly; she could’ve been in the jewel thief business with Catwoman. Maybe she’d settled down before everything went to hell, started dating somebody kind; maybe she’d joined the Bat, and was working to help pick Gotham up piece by piece.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

Luther didn’t feel like he needed to be his own villain, not the way Harley Quinn said, exactly, but he could choose for himself who to reach for, right? He’d always wanted to choose Allison. 

Luther didn’t think to change out of his rumpled Two-Face henchperson suit before showing up at Harley Quinn’s lair, looking for Klaus. Harley camped out in the old derelict Gotham Mall, which was currently overrun with escaped, apocalypse-style zoo animals. Luther wasn’t exactly sure on the protocol for something like this, so he knocked on the door. Cleared his throat. Tried to think of what to say — what anyone would say — in his particular situation. He knocked loud, with so much of his strength. The mall shuddered under the weight of it. 

Clayface came to the door, eventually, with reading glasses perched precariously on his dripping cheeks. He had a thick, much-dog-eared book on acting technique limp in his hand, and he leaned against the doorframe dubiously, asking what Luther could possibly want at this ungodly hour. 

Well — uh. Yeah. It was still pretty early, wasn’t it?

“Can I talk to Klaus, please?” Luther tried. “I mean, the Séance?”

“Hm,” Clayface said. One of Harley Quinn’s hyenas whined, just out of sight. Luther really didn’t want to fight — didn’t want to hurt — a hyena.

And then over Clayface’s shoulder, drawling, stumbling around with a towel on his head and one headphone in, Klaus called, “... You! You look so familiar, and not just in a ‘Two-Face-goon, I’ve probably fought you’ sort of way. Who are you?” He paused, listening to something in the air. 

The voices of the dead, maybe? 

Probably? 

“Starts with an L?” Klaus asked the emptiness. “Do you remember anything else?”

“Luther,” Luther said. 

And Klaus stared, for a moment. Open-mouthed. Thinking. He said, “That seems right, doesn't it? Okay. Luther. Well, fuck, then. Come in!”

Wait, _who’s_ Allison?

Whoa there, big guy. 

Shh, shh. We’ll figure this out. We can get Harley in on it... start at the beginning. 

Want some weird Gotham-apocalypse sushi? 

Cereal?

**Author's Note:**

> A couple things....
> 
> 1\. Aww I like imagining Harley and Klaus being friends. :')  
> 2\. I intentionally didn't solidify where Allison and the others are in Gotham, here.... sorry.... but!!! I like the idea of considering different possibilities.  
> 3\. For example, I really considered casting Raymond as a member of the Bat family!!! Now, that could be some interesting drama, right? But maybe it could also be interesting if Allison signed on as an emergency medic while the Joker ruled Gotham, or if she's forming a resistance against the Injustice League all her own, or any number of things........
> 
> At any rate: my apologies for the ambiguity. I hope you can still have fun with this AU!


End file.
